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How myths are made – Bad Science

2009 Aug 12, 8:08"In a formal academic paper, every claim is referenced to another academic paper... This convention gives us an opportunity to study how ideas spread, and myths grow, because in theory you could trace who references what, and how, to see an entire belief system evolve from the original data."PermalinkCommentsscience meme research health medicine ben-goldacre network graph

Coding Horror: The Paper Data Storage Option

2009 Aug 3, 11:06"But how efficient is the alphabet at encoding information on a page?"PermalinkCommentsvia:ericlaw humor paper storage encoding

Anyone can write this crap (Phil Gyford’s website)

2009 Jul 31, 5:57"Is it worth the sensationalism and scaremongering? The endlessly inaccurate and dangerous science reporting? The pointless and news-free lifestyle articles? Do newspapers that prioritise stories based on celebrities and spectacle rather than importance to the world deserve to exist?"PermalinkCommentsvia:sambrook internet news journalism media

CAN PEOPLE DISTINGUISH PATE FROM DOG FOOD? - AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF WINE ECONOMISTS

2009 Jul 6, 2:06"Considering the similarity of its ingredients, canned dog food could be a suitable and inexpensive substitute for pate or processed blended meat products such as Spam or liverwurst... Although 72% of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the five samples in terms of taste... subjects were not better than random at correctly identifying the dog food."PermalinkCommentshumor science statistics food culture research study paper

A bold new computer metaphor

2009 Jun 22, 7:00"...computer technology has made it to the late sixth century AD, at best. In the olden days, you see, the upper classes were able to read and write, but they generally preferred not to. They left it to people who had to do it, like scribes and clergymen."PermalinkCommentsliterature paper history literacy religion

Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures

2009 May 3, 10:03"Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures - DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Information and Computer Science by Roy Thomas Fielding 2000"PermalinkCommentshttp rest paper web architecture development api webservices roy-fielding

Secure Content Sniffing for Web Browsers or How to Stop Papers from Reviewing Themselves

2009 Apr 23, 2:22Review of mime sniffing based XSS attacks with recommended protections for both web sites and browsers. Also, surprising to me since I rarely see it in this sort of a paper, thought and stats on the compat. affects of their recommended changes for browsers. Very happy to see that in there!PermalinkCommentsweb security ie browser xss sniff mime firefox chrome safari html html5

FREE strips of paper on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

2009 Apr 3, 11:38Har harPermalinkCommentshumor free paper photo flickr

Best Funeral Ever at Improv Everywhere

2009 Apr 1, 9:48"For our latest mission, 30 Improv Everywhere agents found a random funeral in the obituary section of the newspaper and turned it into the best funeral ever... The family, especially the older couple in the middle, were seriously mourning. They seemed to be focusing on the priest and mostly ignoring us. Still, we had to be as serious as we possibly could. If anyone cracked a smile or giggled we would completely ruin the funeral for the family."PermalinkCommentshumor parody video improv-everywhere

Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink | Media | The Guardian

2009 Apr 1, 9:20"Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter"PermalinkCommentshumor news twitter journalism newspaper

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable - Clay Shirky

2009 Mar 16, 2:35"Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That's been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we're going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead."PermalinkCommentsinternet clay-shirky newspaper copyright history journalism via:ethan_t_hein

25 ideas: Creating An Open-Source Business Model For Newspapers

2009 Feb 26, 11:52This is what I'd like in a newspaper: "1: Focus on original content, do not rewrite wire stories or press releases." and "2: Focus on hyper-local coverage, newspapers should "own" their regional beat because they have the best contacts and the best understanding of local companies and issues."PermalinkCommentsvia:sambrook newspaper advertising business journalism internet

Meteorology Law of the People's Republic of China -- china.org.cn

2009 Feb 4, 4:16From Sorting it all Out wrt the weather gadget in Vista's sidebar, this link to China's laws on weather forecast: "Article 22 The State applies a unified system for the issue of public meteorological forecast and severe weather warning... No other organizations or individuals may issue to the community such forecast or warning." "Article 25 When the media, including radio, television, newspaper and telecommunication, issue to the community public meteorological forecast or severe weather warning, they shall use the latest meteorological information provided by a meteorological office... Part of the revenues from the distribution of meteorological information shall be drawn to support the development of meteorological service." Whether an application is legally allowed to provide a weather forecast is not an attribute I would have imagined necessary for a localization API.PermalinkCommentsvia:michael-kaplan china law legal politics weather forecast localization

Paper: "moral panic" behind attempts to link games, violence

2009 Jan 22, 9:43'Behind the press reports, the academic community has been engaged in a hot debate over whether the evidence supports a connection between the violent content of games and any behavioral effects. One of the researchers who has argued forcefully that it's not is Christopher Ferguson, who has just published a paper that argues that the continued societal focus on games as a causal factor in violence is an example of what's termed a "moral panic."'PermalinkCommentsgame violence society videogames

Noisy Decent Graphics: All the ephemera that's fit to print *

2009 Jan 15, 9:41"Russell and I thought it would be interesting to take some stuff from the internet and print it in a newspaper format. Words as well as pictures. Like a Daily Me, but slower. When we discovered that most newspaper printers will let you do a short run on their press (this was exactly the same spec as the News Of The World) we decided to have some fun."PermalinkCommentsblog internet design art newspaper typography print publishing via:mattb

the box doodle project // boxdoodle.com

2008 Dec 31, 2:14Art on boxes: "the rules are quite simple: rearrange a box to make any kind of figure or object. make the most of least."PermalinkCommentsart box design diy paper gallery sculpture doodle illustration

G1 Android Phone

2008 Nov 9, 11:29

T-Mobile G1 Wallpapers by romainguy
I finally replaced my old regular cell-phone which was literally being held together by a rubber band with a fancy new G1, my first Internet accessible phone.

I had to call the T-Mobile support line to get data added to my plan and the person helping me was disconcertingly friendly. She asked about my weekend plans and so I felt compelled to ask her the same. Her plans involved replacing her video card so she could get back to World of Warcraft and do I enjoy computer gaming? I couldn't tell if she was genuine or if she was signing me up for magazines.

I was with Sarah in her new car, trying out the phone's GPS functionality via Google Maps while she drove. I switched to Street View and happened to find my car. It was a weird feeling, kind of like those Google conspiracy videos.

The phone runs Google's open source OS and I really enjoy the application API. Its all in Java and URIs and mime-types are sort of basics. Rather than invoking the builtin item picker control directly you invoke an 'intent' specifying the URI of your list of items, a mime-type describing the type of items in the list, and an action 'PICK' and whatever is registered as the picker on the system pops up and lets the user pick from that list. The same goes if you want to 'EDIT' an image, or 'VIEW' an mp3.

I wanted to replace the Google search box gadget that appears on the home screen with my own search box widget that uses OpenSearch descriptors but apparently in the current API you can't make home screen gadgets without changing parts of the OS. My other desired application is something to replace this GPS photo tracker device by recording my location to a file and an additional program on my computer to apply those locations to photos.

PermalinkCommentstmobile personal api phone technical g1 android google

I Voted

2008 Nov 9, 11:18

I Voted 2008 - Farewell to Polls by RedRaspusThis past Tuesday I voted in my first presidential election. Of course I was eligible twice before so don't tell my social studies teacher. I read about folks who stood in line for twelve hours waiting to vote but I personally had no issues. I found the voting location around 10am and it seemed appropriately busy: There were people voting but no lines. I came in and looked confused until an elderly lady gave me a paper to bubble in. The voting booth was more like a fold out voting table at a very awkward height and in the end my back ached. It feels better to vote in person and have a back ache after. Its more like I've accomplished something.

PermalinkCommentspersonal voting

Amazon.com: A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates: RAND Corporation: Books

2008 Oct 31, 7:10Bruce Schneier pointed out this book: "A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates (Paperback)". Its 600 pages of random numbers. I'd get a copy if it didn't cost $90! From the stats page Amazon lists the 100 most used words in the book: "6 8 11 19 23 28 30 32 37 38 42 47 52 54 56 60 72 77 80 84 86 92 101 102 107 108 111 115 125 126 131 143 147 148 150 157 158 163 166 167 171 179 183 188 190 197 206 207 212 215 218 220 226 228 230 234 236 242 247 249 251 253 261 265 272 292 297 304 311 323 332 336 337 338 344 345 354 356 358 359 364 371 372 374 384 389 391 409 412 413 421 433 436 443 457 481 489 516 517 642"PermalinkCommentsvia:schneier random book humor math csc

Business & Technology | Jobs with real authority: working on Microsoft's spell-checker | Seattle Times Newspaper

2008 Sep 30, 11:05Article on the team that owns the Office spell-checker: 'But, the team asked itself, should "calender" be flagged, or squiggled - have the red squiggly underline that indicates a misspelling? Yes, because letting it go through as correct "more often masks the really common spelling error that people make for calendar."' I didn't even realize they had written calender rather than calendar in the articlePermalinkCommentsmicrosoft office spell-check language
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